Last week I attended the “WiMAX Strategies Asia Conference 2009” in Kuala Lumpur-Malaysia, organized by Beacon Events. I served as chair on day two of the conference and had the privilege of moderating a Spectrum Roundtable session with Asian operators. Beacon did an excellent job inviting senior level executives representing the leading operators from Asia, including Packet One Networks, Tatung Infocomm, Telkom Indonesia and TATA Communications, to speak at the conference. Here are my key take-aways from the conference:

The event was attended by around 100 participants. It was an operator heavy audience (more than 80%), with several newbies to WiMAX from places like Indonesia,Vietnam and Laos. The breadth of topics covered was overwhelming. The majority of the speakers believe that Asia-Pacific region holds the best prospects for WiMAX services in terms of the subscriber uptake and future innovation. The speakers presented some important facts to support their statements. Michael Lai, CEO of Packet One Networks, presented the slide below to highlight the opportunities for WiMAX in Asia.

With LTE services still few years away from being commercially available, the majority of the speakers backed WiMAX as the best 4G technology currently available, with heavyweights like Packet One, Telkom Indonesia and TATA Communications sharing their experience and plans. Packet One really caught my attention during the conference. P1 is moving ahead with WiMAX at an accelerated pace and is pushing to sign up 200,000 paying subscribers soon. P1’s WiMAX network covers 8 million POPs. The operator is expecting to be EBITDA positive by Q1 2010- about 18 months after the service was launched in August 2008. P1 is currently handling an average monthly traffic of 7.9 GB/subscriber on its WiMAX network.

After its great success in Malaysia P1 has decided to launch WiMAX services in other Asian countries. It has created P1 International to launch WiMAX services in other Asian countries. P1 International has started its WiMAX activities in Singapore. It acquired a 2.5GHz WiMAX license in Singapore, after buying the Facilities-based Operator (FBO) license from Singapore based Pacnet. The transfer of the license and its radio spectrum right is still waiting for approval from the Singapore telecoms regulator.

P1 International plans to offer multi frequency/multi country roaming between P1 Malaysia and P1 Singapore. India is next on its roadmap. As per Dr PS Tang, Managing Director of Packet One International, India is a sweet spot opportunity for WiMAX. The success of WiMAX in India is contingent on its ability to gain a share of both the fixed and mobile data market.

There was also a debate about the recently released spectrum in Indonesia and the prospects for WiMAX in the country. The operators in Indonesia have recently adopted WiMAX with an objective of extending the broadband connectivity to Indonesians. WiMAX spectrum in Indonesia has been allocated to a number of operators in 2009 in the 3.3 GHz and 2.3 GHz band. The allocations were based on the basis of zones (there are presently 15 zones in Indonesia). Despite the country having a cellular subscriber base of over 150 million (by the middle of 2009), the number of fixed line connections remains at below 10 million. The broadband connectivity stands at below 2 million.

The license holders from Indonesia are quite optimistic about WiMAX emerging as a successful technology in the coming years. WiMAX has been deployed with greater success in smaller cities and suburbs, both because the markets are less competitive and because the geography is more favourable. The first point is fairly obvious; secondary and tertiary markets are far less likely to obtain comprehensive fiber builds or even massive DSL deployments because the potential customer base is relatively small. In emerging economies like Indonesia, network can initially be deployed for fixed/nomadic broadband at lower CAPEX and slowly evolve to support full mobility in line with revenue growth.

The majority of the operators at the conference revealed that WiMAX for now is working great for them and they would like to make maximum amount of money from it. They also ask whether TD-LTE could potentially converge with WiMAX 802.16m and be backward compatible to WiMAX 802.16e.This could serve as an insurance policy to their WiMA X investments. Eventually wireless broadband capacity is never enough and there is limited RF spectrum in FDD and TDD format and there is always a need for WiMAX, 3G and LTE to co-exist.

Other conference highlights include:

• Wing K. Lee, CEO of YTL e (WiMAX license holder in Malaysia), hinted at a major announcement with regard to the company’s WiMAX plans in the week of 9th November, 2009.  It is planning an investment of 2.5 billion Ringitt (US$739 million) in WiMAX in Malaysia in 2010.

• Peter Yen, President of Tatung Infocomm, revealed his company’s roadmap with regard to WiMAX devices

2009: Indoor Modem, Outdoor Modem, USB Dongles

2010: WiMAX/Wi-Fi Embedded Notebook, Smart Phone, Dual  Mode Phone, WiMAX MID

2011: PDA, Navigator, Digital Camera, PMP, MP3/MP4

• Arief Gunawan of Telkom Indonesia revealed its company’s plans to deploy WiMAX.  Telkom will deploy 3.3GHz WiMAX network on North Sumatra, Central Sumatra, South Sumatra; Banten & Jabotabek (Jakarta, Bogor Tangerang, Bekasi), West Java, West Kalimantan and East Kalimantan. It will deploy 2.3 GHz network on Central Java, East Java; Papua, Maluku & North Maluku, and North Sulawesi. Telkom Indonesia has access to 15 MHz in 2.3 GHz band and 12.5 MHz in 3.3 GHz band.

• Neeraj Sonker, VP of TATA Communications, updated the audience with current number of base stations deployed by TATA for retail WiMAX services in India. A total of 1100 Base Stations have been deployed so far with the following breakdown.
  
  
  • Banglore: 200 BTS
  • Delhi NCR > 400 BTS
  • Hyderabad > 100 BTS
  • Chandigarh > 60 BT

• Robert Winch, Chairman of Planet Online, a WiMAX operator in Laos, delivered an interesting presentation titled “Maximising WiMAX Opportunities in Laos: Overcoming the Challenge of High Costs in a Low GDP Market.” There are no high-rise buildings in Laos. Typically, the buildings are six to seven storeys, which makes radio planning lot easier. However, there are challenges as well for deploying WiMAX in the country. The cost of International Bandwidth is high. This is the main reason why WiMAX ARPU is high in Laos-close to US$50. GDP per Capita in Laos is approx US$2,134. This is low relative to income required for US$50 ARPU.

For more information you can contact the author at basharat@maravedis-bwa.com

Copyright © 2009 by Maravedis Inc. All Rights Reserved.
No reproduction without consent.



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